The Legal and Political Implications of the NYPD's Counterterrorism Operations Overseas: the International Liaison Program Jia Ma Dickinson College

Dickinson College Dickinson Scholar Student Honors Theses By Year Student Honors Theses 5-22-2016 The Legal and Political Implications of the NYPD's Counterterrorism Operations Overseas: The International Liaison Program Jia Ma Dickinson College Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.dickinson.edu/student_honors Part of the American Politics Commons, Criminal Law Commons, International and Area Studies Commons, International Relations Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, and the National Security Law Commons Recommended Citation Ma, Jia, "The Legal and Political Implications of the NYPD's Counterterrorism Operations Overseas: The nI ternational Liaison Program" (2016). Dickinson College Honors Theses. Paper 235. This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Dickinson Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Legal and Political Implications of the NYPD’s Counterterrorism Operations Overseas: The International Liaison Program By Jia “Majer” Ma Submitted in partial fulfillment of Honors Requirements for the Program in Policy Studies Dr. Douglas Edlin, Supervisor May 10, 2016 Ma 2 Chapter 1. Introduction “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have entered into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have.” Michael Bloomberg, Former Mayor of New York City “[The] NYPD is in close contact with our international liaison in Paris and the local authorities and are closely monitoring the situation” (“Obama, Cuomo, De Blasio Decry Paris Attacks; NYPD Steps Up Security Citywide”). This was the news report released a few hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015. What was interesting about this news is that the New York Police Department (NYPD) international liaison officers were on the scene of the attacks in Paris even before the arrival of any federal agencies. How could the police officers of New York City be at Paris, France, in such a short time and why were they there in the first place? These are the essential questions that this paper will address in later chapters. On the morning of September 11, 2001, four coordinated attacks happened in the United States (U.S.). Two 110-story World Trade Center towers in New York City collapsed and the west side of the Pentagon building was also destroyed. Around 3000 innocent civilians and military personnel were killed. The impacts of that day were so great that they still influence the different dimensions of policies today. As this paper will later show, not only did that day change the whole landscape of U.S.’s domestic and foreign policy, it also reshaped the way New York City views itself. No longer was New York City just any municipality; it became the landmark Ma 3 and the symbol of freedom and liberty. This made the City extremely aware of potential threats and even turned itself into a mini counterterrorism battlefield. This paper will focus on the NYPD’s counterterrorism operation, specifically the International Liaison Program (ILP). As the paper will show, its existence has both merits and faults. Chapter 2 provides the background information for the development of the NYPD’s counterterrorism program as a whole. It starts with the need for cooperation among different agencies to collect intelligence information and the establishment of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the NYPD. It then goes into detail of the problems that existed within such federal-local collaboration and how the mistrust between the FBI and the NYPD gave birth to the ILP. Chapter 3 continues the discussion of the ILP by focusing on the nature of its activities as conducting surveillance operations. Because the NYPD has conducted very similar activities domestically, it will be useful to review a court case, Handschu v. Special Serv. Div. and to discuss its potential applications to the surveillance activities that the NYPD was conducting as part of the ILP. This is because Handschu Decree was originally designed to curtail the level of surveillance activities the NYPD has engaged in but was later modified to allow the NYPD to have access to information to combat terrorism after 9/11. This shows that 9/11 was able to change the court’s attitudes towards surveillance activities and this could be used by the NYPD to justify its ILP. Chapter 4 then examines the ILP in detail. It begins with a description of the program and how it expanded over the past decade. It then discusses its potential benefits of enabling the NYPD to collect timely intelligence information to strengthen New York City’s security systems and addresses problems with its perceived lack of legitimacy. It then focuses on the type of legal Ma 4 document the NYPD used – the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) – to send its police officers from the intelligence department to different countries and collect intelligence information. In particular, this chapter will analyze the nature of MOUs and the specific language used in the MOU between the NYPD and the Philippines National Police (PNP) to demonstrate how it was applied in the case of the ILP. Chapter 5 discusses the constitutional issues that arise with the use of the MOU. The chapter analyzes the clauses from both the understandings of the framers and the meaning of the text. It then attempts to discuss the applications of these constitutional provisions to the ILP. As the analysis shows, the ILP has both characteristics of being unconstitutional and constitutional. However, as this chapter demonstrates, with insufficient facts and judicial precedents available, the question of whether the NYPD’s use of the MOUs is constitutional can be suggested but not definitively determined. As a result, even though the NYPD’s ILP may appear to be illegal and illegitimate at first glance, the intention and the nature of the program make it hard to determine its legality. Because it was born as a result of both the failures of the federal government and the need for global metropolitan policing, its existence did yield potential benefits as a counter-terrorism program. As a result, there is still value for its existence but much more needs to be done at the different levels of the government to ensure the transparency and accountability of such a program. Ma 5 Chapter 2. Background Information “In this day and age when we found that those oceans aren’t big enough to protect us from the rest of the world, it is terribly important that we focus on terrorism as well.” Michael Bloomberg, Former Mayor of New York City Infrastructural Changes after 9/11 Terrorism has existed long before 9/11 but it only became a domestic concern after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (Price 6; Waxman 380-381). What was significant about the events on 9/11 was that it sparked a massive reform of counterterrorism infrastructure on federal, state, and local level. Congress combined 22 federal agencies to form the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (Homeland Security Act), which became the third largest agency in the federal government (Price 6; The U.S. Census Bureau). The FBI also prioritized terrorism prevention over its regular crime fighting responsibilities (Price 6; Mueller). By 2004, the newly established Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) became responsible for intelligence sharing among all intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the FBI, and parts of DHS and the Department of Defense. At the same time, Congress also created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to begin information gathering and analysis from all sources (Waxman 389; Price 6; Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act). Furthermore, the federal government also sought to advance its information gathering capacity using state and local law enforcement (Price 6; The National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan 43-46). This resulted in the outflow of money from the federal government to local Ma 6 police agencies in supporting police officers becoming the “eyes and ears” of the U.S. intelligence community (Price 6; Carter 344). In this case, high-risk cities like New York City and Los Angeles significantly altered the mission and structure of their police departments (Waxman 384; Kelling and Bratton 5-6). Before 9/11, the NYPD only had a few officers occasionally investigating terrorism-related crimes, and many of the investigations were in collaboration with the FBI (Ljungkvist 78). Following the events of 9/11, the NYPD redefined itself as “the primary local authority defending against a terrorist attack in New York City” (NYPD “Counterterrorism Units”). In addition to the Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) with the FBI, it also created its own Counterterrorism Bureau (CTB) and reformed the Intelligence Division (NYPD “Counterterrorism Units”). New York City Council documents reveal that the budget for NYPD counterterrorism activities varied from $190 million to $220 million annually between fiscal year 2013 and fiscal year 2015 (Mueller and Steward 223). Though there has been little change in terms of counterterrorism personnel since 2003, estimated at around 1000 police officers, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton added an additional 300 officers in June 2015 (Cohen, Gartland, and Fredericks). This makes the total number of police officers assigned to counterterrorism operations roughly 1300. The City of New York only accounts for a part of the NYPD counterterrorism funding. From 2013 to 2015, the City contributed about $80 million while the state and federal governments awarded grants of $97 million, $142 million, and $134 million, to the NYPD for counterterrorism purposes (Mueller and Steward 224).

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